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Chap. I EABLY MOSAICS AT RAVENNA. 25 Santa Maria in Cosmedin was, under the barbaric rule, a Baptistery of the Arians, but is supposed to have been adorned with mosaics after the expulsion of the Goths. The cupola of the octogon is divided into circles like that of the earlier baptistery. The same subjects adorn the basin of the dome and the circle immediately beneath it. 1 Jordan, instead of floating on the water, sits on the bank to the left partly draped in green resting his right arm on a vase, holding a reed in his right hand, and looking on. 2 The capture of Ravenna by Belisarius introduced Greek art anew into that capital, and the exarchs under the orders of Justinian and his successors either embellished the city with new monuments or old churches with new mosaics. But the art of which S. Vitale was an example proved how surely the mosaists of the Eastern empire had declined in the application of the great maxims of plastic and pictorial delineation. In knowledge of form, in type, in distribution they were inferior to their prede cessors ; and, as if conscious of this inferiority, they sought to restore the balance by more minute and careful exe cution, or by the use of the most gorgeous materials. This period of the decline may truly be called Byzantine. Its stamp was impressed on the mosaics of Ravenna during the exarchate, on some mosaics of Rome in the seventh century 1 The apostles, Peter with the I keys and Paul with a scroll, stand on each side of a cushioned I throne above which is the cross. The keys and other emblems in this mosaic are very suspicious. — But the restorer has been very busy here, and the time in which the body of the work was exe cuted may be judged only from the distribution and the forms. The mosaic is certainly of much earlier date than San Vitale, — commenced in 541. The rest of the apostles, in white draperies of antique style, though of somewhat angular and broken folds move towards the throne, separated from each other, — no longer by beauti ful foliated ornament, but by the less graceful palm. In the baptism the Saviour, youthful and beard less, still distantly recals the clas sic type and form. A nimbus surrounds his head, and the dove sheds green rays uponhis features. St. John, on the right, finely shaped, with long hair and beard holds a reed in his left hand, and places his right on the Saviour’s head. 2 His head is strangely adorned with the claws of a lobster. Not an uncommon symbol.